Monday, August 18, 2014

Skin Cancer Surgery

I was an age group swimmer in south Texas, spent most of my time outdoors. My ethnic heritage is Irish and German for the most part, northern European in toto, so I have fair skin. Well now I am paying the price. I have been relatively lucky since I haven't had any melanoma scares but I have had a mix of squamous cell and basal cell cancers removed from my arms and today from my upper chest. Although I am still not freaked out about this, the removal was far more invasive than any of my previous lesions. Today's procedure involved multiple local anesthetic injections, an incision about two inches long, a decent amount of tissue removal, and a bunch of sutures. I go back in two weeks to have the sutures removed. I visit the dermatologist every six months and he didn't say anything back in February but he did seem confident that the procedure was complete. The wages of sin--or in this case the wages of sun.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Longer Nights, Shorter Days

Because my husband and I walk our dogs early each day regardless of the weather or the season, we are attuned to the changes from the earth's orbit, the sun, and the moon. We don't have the truly long dark nights that we experienced in Ireland but the mornings are dark again. Cooler mornings are nice for walking but darker mornings make it hard for our aging terrier to chase the ball or the Frisbee. The coonhound doesn't play games, but he doesn't like hot weather either so he seems more eager to walk. Of course as a hound he is led by his nose so there is a lot of stop and start walking no matter the weather. His paws are well suited to most terrains except ice.

I started quilting the Anonymous quilt today. No fancy designs but the grid pattern will take a long time. I use a 16" hoop, beginning in the middle of the quilt, and didn't even finish one hoop worth though I spent a few hours at it. That's all right. The antique blocks have been waiting 170 years to be made into a quilt so there has never been a deadline. I don't know what I will do with this once I am done. It is probably too fragile to be layered with the dozens of other quilts on the Princess and the Pea bed.

This photo was in another blog entry but that's what the Princess and the Pea bed looks like although in my house it is the Prince bed since all my pets are male. That's Max along with far too many books and far too many quilts, including those on the right waiting to be put back on the bed.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Basting Begins

I finished the applique a couple of days ago and inked my inscription in the center square. Now I am basting the sandwich together. In my old house that was easier because I had a large landing used as a study/library space on the second floor. If you look at the blog entry titled Denna's Quilt it is the space behind me. There I didn't have to move any furniture and the space was big enough to baste even a queen sized quilt. Nothing in that house came in anything less than XL. In my little bungalow I have to choose between moving the furniture in the living room or moving the furniture in the dining room. There's something about the pile on the antique Chinese rug, a family heirloom (or hand me down depending on how one looks at it), that makes keeping the quilt sandwich stable while basting easier so that's usually the space I choose.

Nothing fancy in the quilting. There is a 3/4 inch square grid in the center part and a 1/2 inch square grid in the outside border. Lots and lots of lines but the hand quilting is my favorite part. The basting will take a couple of days so my living room will be out of commission until at least Sunday. I am too old to tailor sit and baste for hours at a time now. After about four lines of sewing I have to get up and relieve my back.
 

Monday, August 11, 2014

One Last Corner

I am going to finish the applique on the current quilt top today. Although I haven't finalized my thoughts about the quilting I thought I might add some trapunto accents in the outside border. That's one reason to learn new techniques or perfect (who is ever perfect?) others. Then you have more options when you work on your next project. The various accents and techniques that quilters in the past took for granted have to be relearned. I saw a quilt in a book once that had handmade silk braiding, cording, stuffed work, reverse applique, you name it. The quilter was supposed to be only 16 when she made the quilt. My mother's hobbies were cleaning and playing bridge so I had absolutely no example or instruction when I started.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Moving Along

I started sewing the borders on to the quilt body yesterday. So far I have one and a third sides applied. Once I get all four sewn on I will miter the corners and then finish the applique. I also inked my inscription in the center square. I have a bizarre sense of humor so writing, "Anonymous Was A Woman," on a very traditional quilt tickles my subversive funny bone. I went to Bryn Mawr where they didn't even teach art because "working" with one's hands was considered demeaning to women. Under that logic it is admirable to write about quilts but not to make quilts. 

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Quilts Matter

On more than one occasion, as I work on either a reproduction quilt (see the Gallery pages on this blog) or a quilt in the spirit of an antique, I think about the impact on life that quilts have. It's amusing to me that my two major leisure activities include so much time for contemplation, since swimming, especially the long distances I favor, allows the mind to wander or focus as the consciousness dictates.

When I made my version of the Bird of Paradise quilt, I considered the anonymous woman who made that original masterwork. My own view of the quilt changed as I drew the designs for each square, trying to be as faithful as I could to what I could see in the miniscule photo I was using. I saw things in that quilt top that I never saw mentioned in the didactic information in the quilt books. This woman was a naturalist, cutting flowers and leaves to mimic the real flowers and leaves around her. The elephant was a little clunky but trying to stuff an elephant in a 14 inch square block isn't easy. It's possible to differentiate the rose leaves from the chestnut leaves on the quilt and each bird with eggs has eggs of the correct color. The layout is similar to the European wall decorations that I most recently saw at Fontainebleau with an inner design surrounded by a vertically oriented leafy design spread over several blocks. Then she added the mostly horizontally oriented band with the accurate depictions of racehorses. The elephant trainer has a heart embroidered on his fancy uniform. The photos that nearly always accompany any text about the quilt show newspaper patterns but the patterns are not found in the quilt--the woman is quite different in the fabric version and of course the man doesn't show at all. That doesn't mean that she didn't cut these newspaper patterns but that she altered her ideas as she worked.

But this unknown applique artist made something that is memorable and treasured, even though she never finished it. Her needlework skills are admirable as are her design skills and her awareness of her world. Quilting has been around for several thousand years. Right now more money in the US is spent on quilting and quilting materials than on golf and fishing combined so quilting drives economic growth as well. The Industrial Revolution would have been vastly different if the production of fabric had not been a focus of technology. Without the waste product of chlorine gas that the process of making stable green dye provided, the first world war would have taken a different course.

So quilts and their makers have always had an impact on their immediate surroundings and families, but they have also had an impact on history. Even though most of the quilt makers of the past remain anonymous, quilts matter.